


75% of me

by Solovei



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Angst, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Otabek Altin/Yuri Plisetsky, Feels, Hell is other people basically, Homophobic language possibly?, Hurt/Comfort, Internalized Gender Bullshit, Literally 1 fight happens and it's fine, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Minor Injuries, Minor Violence, Non-Graphic Smut, Otabek is the best boyfriend, Post-Canon, References to Past Bullying, Summaries are hard y'all, Swearing, Top Yuri Plisetsky, Yuri isn't as confident as he appears, not by much though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-11
Updated: 2020-02-11
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:47:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22658770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Solovei/pseuds/Solovei
Summary: Someone grabs his arm on the backswing, and just like that - he stills. The cloud of cologne is broken up by another smell, something warmer and more familiar - leather, wind. A faint scent of spices he can’t identify.Beka.Yuri goes limp and allows Otabek to drag him off. His ears are ringing, head reeling as though he overdid a spin.---Yuri's long-awaited weekend with Otabek doesn't go exactly according to plan.
Relationships: Mila Babicheva & Yuri Plisetsky, Otabek Altin/Yuri Plisetsky
Comments: 10
Kudos: 90





	75% of me

**Author's Note:**

> So I know that YOI is supposed to be set in this magical world where homophobia isn't real but you know what's still real? Fucked-up sexist bullshit. You can't tell me that being professionally called "fairy" doesn't leave a teenage boy with SOME kind of complex.  
> Also this whole thing came about because a friend and I realized that Yuri probably HATES ice dancing with a passion.  
> Set roughly a year or so after Barcelona GPX; Yuri is 17, and yes he has his own apartment now.  
> 

He is at a party at Mila’s and there are so many people here that he wants to claw his eyes out. His hand feels sweaty against the bottle of cheap beer that someone shoved in his direction when he came in. From under the drawn-up hood of his sweatshirt, he surveys the scene. Mila’s apartment is a penthouse loft, all big windows and ironically industrial decor. All of her friends are ironic too and he has no idea how to talk to any of them. He catches snippets of conversation from his place leaning against the arm of a sofa - art, politics, where the best place is to get a sandwich in LA, how the club scene has gone downhill now that all the tourists know where the good places are. 

Otabek is only in St. Petersburg for the weekend. Yuri glances at his phone; 10:12 pm on Friday. The minutes are counting down, tick tock until they go another three or four months with only FaceTime and cold showers to keep them going. Right now they should be holed up at the apartment, eating terrible chinese food and having mind-blowing sex. If all had gone according to plan, they would not have left until Sunday evening, when he would take Otabek to the airport. This has been their routine ever since that fateful meeting in Barcelona and it was an occasion he looked forward to with almost religious devotion.

They almost made a clean getaway this time too, when Otabek came to pick him up after practice. But no - with the ferocity of a mountain lion, Mila ambushed them on their way out, and then it was a flurry of _“Oh, we never see you anymore, Yurik”_ and _“come over to my place tonight, this guy Anton will be there and he owns a club so he should totally meet Otabek!”_

He grits his teeth. Parties are stupid. He’s been dragged to enough galas and press conferences in his career to know that they are mostly an excuse to get drunk and say you were in the same room as some famous person. A group of girls passes by him, giggling and talking fast, and for a second he wonders if they are here to ask him for his autograph, but they barely glance in his direction as they make their way towards the kitchen where the booze is kept. 

Yuri wonders where Otabek has gone off to. He tries to scan the crowd, but most people are taller than him and he can't see. He does find a convenient surface on which to abandon the bottle of beer, though, as he picks his way past people laughing and talking in groups. Mila has terrible taste in music, so perhaps Otabek went out onto the roof to throw himself into the canals below. This is a problem, Yuri thinks, because Otabek comprises at least 75% of his own coolness factor. Otabek basically _oozes_ cool, which is what he thought about him at first, before they got to know each other and he realized that Beka actually works really damn hard. The fact that he took a whole weekend off from training to come see him… 

“Oi. Oi you’re that kid, right?” A voice, male, says next to him. 

_Ugh._ He doesn’t look up; he doesn’t want to be here and he doesn’t want to talk to these pretentious drunk people. 

“Plisetsky, right? You were on TV?” The guy says. He doesn’t sound drunk, but he doesn’t sound very friendly, either. He sounds… patronizing. Like he’s talking to a child who wants to sit at the adult table. Yuri glances over at the guy’s direction. He’s taller, with a buzzcut, dressed like he robbed an Adidas store in the dark and had to make a quick getaway. He’s wearing a fanny pack cross-ways around his torso, and acting like he started that trend. 

“Sure, probably. I skate,” Yuri says vaguely. Normally, if someone asked where they know him from, he would take the opportunity to brag, a little, about winning the Junior Championships, about the Grand Prix, about his medals …But not tonight. Tonight he is tired and annoyed and all he wants to do is collect his boyfriend, order the #25 special off the takeout menu, and lie back in his own bed as Otabek-in-the-flesh short circuits every single one of his nerves.

“Oh yeah! You do the like, ice dance or whatever right?” 

From under his hood, Yura raises his eyes up, and they are full of unbridled hate. 

“The fuck did you say?” He mutters, voice hoarse, low. He takes a step forward, eyes narrowed, anger seething through him. The guy smells like he took a bath in overly-expensive cologne and it makes him woozy.

Adidas Guy continues, unfaltering. “Y’know, like - the ice dance, right? With the music and costumes? You’re one of _those_ , like Mila? Are you guys a _\--_ ” 

Nobody would ever learn what the rest of that sentence is meant to be, because that is when Yuri’s fist connects with the guy’s stupid, cologne-smothered face. 

“It’s not. FUCKING. ICE DANCE.” He screams, as Adidas Guy is sent stumbling backwards into a spiky-looking metallic lamp. The conversation around them abruptly stops, people glancing around with slightly worried faces. Yuri stands over him, knuckles stinging, breathing heavily. He wants to punch something else. He wants to jump off the roof. He wants to find Ota--

“Aw, look at this, everyone. It’s so cute.” Adidas Guy calls out, and Yuri’s thoughts come to a screeching halt. “Why don’t you go do a real fuckin’ sport, you fairy,” he hisses, before spitting on the floor. 

Yuri is on him in a second, and all he can feel is white hot rage, filling him up until he’s ready to burst. He is outside of himself, moving on instinct, a sick and twisted charade of the muscle memory that comes from performing a program you’ve practised for months and carved into your sinews. He is an animal, backed into a corner. He is an animal, acting in self defence. His hood falls off his head, hair spilling across his already clouded vision - but he doesn’t care, couldn’t give less of a fuck about who will see him or what they will say. 

Time ceases to exist. It could have been 30 seconds or 30 hours. 

Someone grabs his arm on the backswing, and just like that - he stills. The cloud of cologne is broken up by another smell, something warmer and more familiar - leather, wind. A faint scent of spices he can’t identify. 

_Beka_. 

Yuri goes limp and allows Otabek to drag him off. His ears are ringing, head reeling as though he overdid a spin. One by one, his senses return to reality, snatches of voices filtering in as if through a closed door. He lets them wash over him, swaying slightly as he hovers in the comforting aura that is Otabek. His hand is still holding Yuri’s bicep, and he is trying to ground himself to that firm grasp. 

“ -- sorry, are you -- do you need -- “

“ -- control your fucking --” 

“ -- old enough --- here?” 

“ -- should go -- “

Otabek’s face floats into his field of vision, and he leads them away, through the crowd of gaping partygoers, towards the door. The elevator, the streets, the city lights - everything is a blur. Yuri buries his face in the side of Otabek’s jacket as they walk and says nothing. As the rush of anger and adrenaline recedes, he becomes slowly aware of the things it left behind - a stinging pain in his hands, something wet on his cheeks. 

They get into a cab. Yuri watches the smudged lights of cars pass by out the window, because he is terrified to find out what kind of expression is on Otabek’s face. He hasn’t even started thinking about all the other consequences yet, about Yakov catching wind of this, about the possibility of someone having recorded the incident and shared it on social media. Right now, all of that feels far away, a problem for a future him too distant to register. 

“I’m glad that you’re okay,” Otabek says finally when the cab drops them off in front of the apartment building, and Yuri feels his heart sink into the bottom of his stomach. He wishes a giant chasm would open up right in the middle of St. Petersburg and swallow him whole. 

“I… I fucked it up, didn’t I? You came all this way and I fucking ruined it…” Yuri says, and his voice hitches as though he’s about to start laughing or crying. 

“No. That guy was out of line.”

Yuri finally allows himself to look at him, even as he is standing there in front of his building with the keys held in his bruised hand, messy hair framing his face in the light of the dull orange streetlight. 

Otabek looks… like Otabek, he thinks, his usual slightly aloof face. It’s…. Fine? He takes comfort in that, at the very least. Except, obviously, it’s not fine because he definitely overreacted, and he knows it. Something inside him bubbles with self-hatred, thick and viscous. He could’ve played it cool, not let it get to him like any normal person would have… 

Maybe Otabek is about 75% of his self control too. 

“What did he say, anyway?” 

Yuri doesn’t answer, turning away and opening the door, hoping the sound of the keys will fill up his silence. He could offer any number of things in response, things like‘It wasn’t what he said, it was how he said it’, but it all seems to miss the mark. 

The truth is, Yuri doesn’t know why he did what he did. Some switch inside of him flipped, and just like that, he went off the fucking rails. That’s what happened. He’d rather forget the whole thing, really, but something tells him Otabek isn’t going to let this go so easily. 

The metal clang of the door echoes in the empty stairwell. The light on the landing is out again. 

Still, for the first time since that entire disaster of a party happened, he begins to feel a little better.

  


\---

  


The bathroom is warm and quiet. Yuri closes his eyes, listens to the drip-drip-drip sound of water gathering and then falling from the tips of his hair. His head is still buzzing. Faintly, through one wall or another, he can hear one of the neighbors yelling along with a soccer match. He feels displaced in time and space, transported back to Grandpa’s apartment in Moscow, when he’d come home crying because the other kids made fun of him at the rink again. 

_“Why don’t you just play hockey?”_

_“Figure skating is for girls!”_

_“What’s wrong with you?”_

The face looking back at him from the other side of the mirror looks tired, pale. Nothing looks broken, though there’s a scrape at his jawline and a bruise starting to form on the side of his forehead. He pokes at it experimentally, and winces as the raw skin smarts. 

_You did this to yourself_ , some part of him says. He wonders whose voice it is. It doesn’t sound like Yakov or Victor or Grandpa or anyone else he knows. 

_What were you trying to prove?_

He tears a towel off the rack and dries off quickly, throwing it haphazardly into the sink when he’s done getting dressed. With practiced ease, he steps over Potya, who likes to lay in front of the bathroom door and attempt to claw at whatever is on the over side. 

Rounding a corner, he nearly runs into Otabek. 

“Geez, I thought you were asleep.” 

“I said I’d be here when you were done. And I am. Come sit,” he says, and Yuri realizes he is holding something in his hands. An ice pack.

“I’m fine, Beka, really--” he starts to say, but Otabek takes his hands into one of his own, turning them over and examining the reddish purple bruises starting to bloom over his knuckles. Yuri feels his heart sink again. 

Otabek fixes him with a gaze that seems to imply very clearly that he is _not_ fine, and in all honesty, he is too tired to argue. Here, in his apartment, the warm aura that Otabek carries seems to expand to fill the entire space. Yuri doesn’t protest when he is led to the kitchen, where there is already a hot cup of tea placed onto the table, or when Otabek expertly wraps a kitchen towel around the ice pack and holds it to his knuckles, his own hands resting on top of the bundle as if he is afraid it will grow legs and scuttle away. 

The silence between them grows. Yuri looks at the cup of tea and thinks that perhaps this is more of a gesture than a beverage. He glances anxiously toward his bedroom, thinking that perhaps there is still time for that mind-blowing sex he’d been waiting three months for. 

"Yura… you need to tell me what happened back there," Otabek says, and he sounds serious. 

Then again, maybe not. Yuri just scoffs, clicking his tongue against his teeth impatiently. "You said it yourself, the guy was out of line."

"But what did he say to you?" 

Yuri huffs and turns away, unable to bear the concern in those brown eyes. 

"Called me a fucking _ice dancer_ … said I should…. Do a real sport or whatever" he mutters, from behind a curtain of wet hair. "You should've heard him, Beka, the way he said it, with a sneer like--" 

Otabek lets out a quiet "Hm," and he wonders if this is his cue to stop talking. Someday he hopes to fully catalog every kind of silence employed by Otabek Altin, their exact properties and uses. This one, he knows, is the thoughtful kind. 

"Yura… are you ashamed of your career?" he asks, and Yuri is about to open his mouth because _how dare he_ , but Otabek holds up a hand "Do you perhaps think it's not… manly?" 

_Fairy_. 

He never liked that moniker; never chose it, either - some sports journalist out of Volgograd called him that in the coverage of his first Junior Championship and it stuck. He hated how it made him seem different, another nail in the coffin of everyone’s opinion of him. It wasn’t enough that he looked like he did, they had to market it, too. It didn’t matter that he hated every single one of his costumes except the one he picked out for his GPX Exhibition skate, always chosen for him and not by him - god, how _freeing_ that was, to wear what he wanted, sometimes he still couldn’t believe he got away with it - it sold tickets, it sold merchandize, and it got him paid.

But he still hated it. 

What did people think when they saw him and Otabek together? 

Did they come up with explanations in their heads that would always, always be so far away from the truth? 

Yuri lets out a long, tired sigh, leans his head down until it is resting on Otabek’s bent arms. He feels a hand come up to brush his hair back, tuck it behind his ear. 

“You know I went to a normal school at first? Until I was like, ten I guess? Once I started seriously doing regional competitions, I got a tutor because I was too busy, but… there’s another reason, too.” He feels slow, heavy, dredging up memories like an icebreaker trawling through a frozen ocean.

Otabek lets him speak.

“I started skating pretty early, and… I was already smaller than most of the other kids in my class. I ended up missing a lot of school because of competitions and I guess nobody got to know me very well. So it was… easy to make fun of me. They didn’t understand why I’d put so much time and energy towards a hobby that was ‘for girls’, why I wanted to wear dumb costumes and skate to music, why I did ballet classes after school.” 

“And, like, every time I’d go to the rink to practice I’d see all these other guys, playing hockey and running into each other and I kept wondering if I was… disappointing everyone by not doing _that_. Aside from Viktor, the only other time I saw guys doing figure skating was at competitions, and… well. You know how those are.” Here he pauses to savor the knowing _hmm_ from Otabek. Any skater knows that. “You might really want to be friends with someone but you also know that you’re competing against them.” 

He hears Potya somewhere in the apartment, the scrabble of her claws as she does her nightly sprint through every room she can reach. The cold from the ice pack is beginning to sting, so Yuri straightens up and takes it off his hands to examine them. They don’t look any less bruised.

“I think… you just really want to be yourself, Yura,” Otabek says, and his voice is soft, private, like he’s sharing a secret. “But everything society wants you to be is pressing down on you, so you try really hard to act out against it.”

“... By punching assholes at parties, you mean?” Yuri quips, and feels the edge of his mouth tug up in a slight smile.

“Yes. Also that.” Otabek smirks back at him. 

  


\---

  


Yuri’s exhaustion catches up to him, and they finally crawl into bed. Even so, he finds himself unable to sleep. He feels restless, charged up, ready to bolt at a moment’s notice. He watches the clock by the bed count down minutes until the lines blur in his vision and dissolve into indistinguishable red lights.

He sighs and glances over at Otabek, who looks sound asleep, laying on his side, one arm under the pillow. They’re nearly the same height, give or take a few centimeters, but Otabek has the broad shoulders and strong torso of a warrior. Yuri watches the rise and fall of his chest, the musculature of his arms. When people remark that figure skating is for girls, Otabek is the kind of person you point at to prove them wrong. Nobody would ever call him a fairy. 

_I’m the rule, and he’s the exception._

_What do people see when they see us together?_

_‘Table for two, does the young lady want anything to drink?’ ‘Excuse me miss, do you or your fella know the way to the metro?’_

_'Ladies first', said JJ's smug face at Rostelecom_

Yuri grits his teeth in the dark, feeling that white-hot rage start to build up again. Why now? He’s been looking forward to this for months, why does he feel like this _now_? 

He remembers the time he kicked in that bathroom door at the Sochi GPX. Hadn’t he grown past that? Otabek had brought a stillness and regularity to his life that wasn’t there before, and yet this _thing_ still bubbled up beneath the surface, threatening to destroy everything just like it destroyed tonight. 

“Beka?” 

“I thought you were tired. Go to sleep…” Otabek mumbles as he draws him closer. 

Yuri sighs against Otabek’s chest, listens to his breath and heartbeat for a few moments. A question pushes up against his throat, and it feels like spoiled milk, rotten and sour in his mouth. He doesn’t want to say it, but he can’t help it.

“Would you still like me if I cut my hair?” he murmurs. It sounds just as dumb out loud as it did in his head.

There’s movement, and he feels Otabek draw back a little to look at him; he’s definitely awake now. “Yes? What kind of a question is that?”

“What if I got like… really fat. Or got huge muscles or something. Yakov says I might still get another growth spurt--”

“Yura.” Otabek sits up, and Yuri follows after him, because he can tell by the knitting of his brows that something is bothering him. “Do you really think I’m that shallow? The reason I like you isn’t because you look a certain way. I like you because you’re determined and driven and you aren’t afraid to speak your mind. I’ve never known you to be so insecure, where is all this coming from?”

Yuri sighs and runs his fingers through his hair to get it out of his eyes. “It’s stupid, never mind.” 

Otabek edges closer to him, drapes an arm around his shoulders, presses a tiny kiss to his temple before leaning his forehead against Yuri’s. “I still want to hear it. Please?”

There’s no way he can resist that word, not when it comes from Otabek, not when he says it in such a way that it sounds like his very existence hinged on the answer. Yuri runs his fingers over the back of his head, feeling the velvety texture of the closely shaved hair there. 

“I just… sometimes when we’re out together, people… people think I’m your girlfriend. And I _hate_ it. I get enough of that when I’m not skating, I… I don’t want to have to be that person when I’m with you. Yakov and Lilia want me to be one thing, and everyone else wants me to be another, and I don’t know what _you_ want, or where I am in all of that.” 

Otabek presses another kiss to his skin, and Yuri feels him draw close, warm breath on his cheek. 

“I don’t want you to be any of those things. I want you to be yourself. You are _zhanym_. That’s all you are to me.” 

_Soul_. 

Yuri turns, catches Otabek’s lips in a kiss, and another, and another. He wants to kiss that word away from his lips, the shape his mouth forms as he says it. 

There’s so little keeping them apart, but he wants to be even closer. He wants to make up for all the time they lost: tonight, and since their last visit. His kisses grow hungrier, more urgent, and he knows that Otabek had picked up on it because he can hear the slightest of moans every time they come up for air. 

“Should we---” Yuri asks the next time they break apart, because it feels important to ask, his kisses turning into bites as he moves from lips to cheek to jawline to neck, breathing in Otabek’s scent and warmth. He wants to devour him whole, take in every part of Otabek so that it will keep him going until the next time they get to see each other.

“I want --” Otabek starts, falters, lets out a gasp and Yuri knows that was a direct result of him sliding his hand down Otabek’s back, past the waistband of his briefs. _I did this_. _He feels this way because of me_. He definitely wants to hear it again, just like this, unfiltered through phone lines and kilometers. 

“What do you want, Beks?” He breathes, as several things realign themselves in his brain. “Come on, say it for me…” 

“I want you to fuck me.” His voice is husky when he says this, a little languid, but Yuri can feel its vibration travel through his body and directly to the growing coil of arousal in his abdomen. His eyes widen in surprise. The entirety of the world fades away until his conscious awareness consists only of this room, this bed, this boy. 

Yuri grins. He claims Otabek’s waiting mouth, hands on his strong shoulders pulling them both down, down. Their clothes are disregarded somewhere in the room, an afterthought lost in the urgency of _finally_. They have only the weekend, and yet they have eternity here. Yuri takes his time running his hands over his chest, his stomach, fingers ghosting over the trail of dark hairs leading from his navel, listening intently to the symphony of breaths and sighs that is Otabek Altin as he is right now.

Otabek takes a moment to cradle Yuri’s hands in his own, pressing soft kisses to his bruised knuckles one by one. This is quite possibly the most tender thing Yuri has seen in his life, and he’s not sure if he wants to cry or go out and buy a ring right this second. 

“Next time you decide to assert your manhood, I want to see it,” Otabek says as he glances up at him, eyes playful.

“Yeah? Is that what gets you hot?” Yuri whispers, leaning close so he’s right next to Otabek’s ear.

He feels a twitch in the pit of his stomach as Otabek wraps his fingers around his cock. “I’m sure you were … magnificent.” 

Yuri wishes a pit would swallow him whole for a different reason now. He flashes a crooked smile at Otabek. “Well, why wait. I can do it right now, if you like.” The anger and shame he felt earlier that night recede, fade into the cadence of their banter and the wet heat of friction between two bodies. 

There’s only this: Yuri pushing into Otabek from behind as their shapes are mirrored in parallel, holding him close, mouthing at his neck, uncaring of the marks he leaves. He is unhurried, patient, willing to let this continue for as long as they both need it to. Otabek is all hushed moans, one hand reaching back to tangle in Yuri’s hair, tugging slightly in a not entirely unpleasant way. The way his back arches, hips grinding into him, reminds Yuri of his own impatience. 

He wants to unmake him as he himself had been unmade before, to pay back in kind every kiss, every stroke, every thrust. Yuri feels indebted, and yet for the first time in a long time, he feels certain. Certain in himself and in them.

They’re close now, and they both know it. Yuri can feel the tension in Otabek’s hamstrings like the millisecond before releasing a jump, stretched out to infinity. His release comes as the crest of a slowly building wave, a tipping point indistinguishable from its predecessor. The slowly building charge in his body reaches a maximum, and he feels his muscles spasm, a shiver on some elemental, primal level. Otabek calls his name, lets it trail off into a moan, and Yuri has a new and interesting sense of _rightness,_ something he hadn’t experienced until now in all of his locker room and backstage fumbles. This feels… right. Like this is what he is meant to be doing. Like everything before this didn’t fit somehow, the edges of it didn’t line up with him properly. But here, now, with Otabek, everything just clicks.

Yuri tries to catch his breath. He registers movement, and realizes that Otabek has turned around to face him, placing a small chaste kiss to his forehead as if in greeting. “Yura… _zhanym_ , you did so good…”

“Did you…. Finish?” He mumbles in reply, pawing idly at Otabek’s arm. 

“Of course.” Otabek whispers, a hand cupping Yuri’s cheek, forehead pressed to his, and for a few moments there’s only the heavy warmth of release, of hearts returning to their normal rhythm, of hair being gently tucked behind ears. 

Yuri feels sleep clawing at his eyelids, but he doesn’t want this to end. He fights to stay awake, to make sure he remembers everything about this moment in time. But there’s a shift again and he reaches out in confusion to find the space beside him empty. “Beka…” he mutters, louder this time. 

“I’m just going to get something to clean up.” Comes the reply. 

So dutiful, Yuri thinks. So helpful. So…

By the time Otabek comes back with a damp washcloth, Yuri has already drifted off. 

  


\---

  


Yuri wakes up late the next morning, squinting at the bright sunlight filtering in through the curtains before ducking his head further under the covers. He fully intends to go back to sleep, thinking that perhaps Otabek will wander back towards the bed and they can cuddle at the very least, or --

There’s a knock on his bedroom door. The one that’s open. He pokes his head out again to glare at Otabek, who is standing there with a tray bearing a cup of coffee and a cheese omelette. Still, he sits up as Otabek brings the food to him, placing the tray carefully onto the bed. 

“I made breakfast. We didn’t have dinner last night, and it’s not good for you to skip meals.”

“Yeah, yeah... “ Yuri says, waving his hand dismissively as he takes a bite of the buttered toast. He notices that his phone has been placed beside the cup of coffee, as well. “What’s that about, though?” He asks, pointing to it.

“People are worried about you. At least check your messages,” Otabek explains, leaning over to kiss him in spite of his morning breath, then steals a bite of his toast. “I’m going for a run.”

Yuri grabs the hem of his shirt before he has a chance to get too far, and kisses him properly, breathing in the scent of body wash and talc. He can feel Otabek smiling into the kiss, and wonders how one person is capable of feeling so many different things in a span of only 12 hours. 

He makes Otabek promise to hurry back, and leans back into his nest of pillows as he takes coffee in one hand and his phone in the other. Letting out a long, deep breath, he unlocks it. 

Five texts from Mila, a voicemail from Yakov, another voicemail from Lilia (sent shortly after he left practice, so she might not even know about the party?), an instagram DM from Victor, and two spam emails notifying him he’s won an all-inclusive trip to the Bahamas. 

“Heh… why…. Why was I worried?” He mutters. Potya jumps up on the bed, clearly angling for his food, but he grabs her before she can reach the tray and deposits her on his chest. Soon enough, she is purring and butting up against his chin. 

_Okay_. _Easiest things first_.

Yuri deletes the emails and marks the DM as read without actually opening it. Taking a deep breath, he turns his phone on speaker and opens the voicemail from Lilia. He can almost hear the classical music playing in the background:

_[Yuriy, I am calling to remind you that the television crew will be there to film your practice for the news on Monday. Do remember to wash your hair. And dress nicely. Farewell.]_

Phew. He lets out a sigh of relief and grins at Potya. “Well, we sure dodged that bullet, didn’t we?” 

Potya meows as if she doesn’t appreciate the ‘we’ in that sentence. 

Yakov’s voicemail is basically several minutes of unintelligible yelling, so he sets the phone down, finishes his food and coffee, puts the dishes away into the sink, and pulls on a pair of sweatpants. He comes back just in time to hear:

[ -- WHEN YOU GET THIS-] 

and then the message cuts off. 

Only Mila’s texts are left, now. Potya glances up at him from where he deposited her onto the bed, and Yuri sighs, shuffling over to the side where Otabek slept last night. He buries his face into the pillow and takes a deep breath. He misses him already and he hasn’t even left yet. 

He thinks about the 75% of his coolness and self-control that Otabek makes up. He considers the remaining 25%. 

Yuri opens Mila’s text messages. 

_ < Yurik, WHAT THE FUCK, are you alive???? I had to step out for a sec and then I hear u beat up a guy at my party???????? > _

_ < ok I got the 101 from Katya, that guy is bad news, I didn’t even invite him I think he just showd up 2 stalk his ex > _

_ < ARE U AT A HOSPITAL? DID OTABEK TAKE U HOME???> _

_ < anyway I feel pretty shit abt all this, should’ve asked u first before insisting u come, I know u don’t like big groups of ppl. Next time we just get dinner or smt, kk? Promise. > _

_ < friends? > _

The last message was sent around 2 am. Sliding his phone into the pocket of his pants, Yuri clambers out of bed, stepping over piles of clothes on the floor to throw open the curtains. It’s a beautiful, crisp autumn day. The window faces the courtyard, and he catches a glimpse of Otabek’s white hoodie down below, almost shining in the sunlight as he jogs back to the apartment. 

Yuri smiles, fishes out his phone, and quickly texts back:

_ < dinner tonight at 7. You me otabek. Hope u like terrible chinese food > _


End file.
